Laura Burns - Quarantine

Sadie smiled. "Is it okay?"

"Yup. That's what sisters are for." Maria got up and started looking through her closet.

"Michael called," Sadie said. "He says it's important."

Maria turned around so fast that Sadie jumped back a little. "Um… excuse me," she said. And then she was gone.

"Thanks for letting me drive you, Maria," Richard said.

Maria just stared out the window, wishing they would get to Meta-chem already. When her father had heard she was heading over to visit Amy, he'd insisted on driving her there. He'd said she might be too emotional to drive. If only it had occurred to him to think about my feelings when I was a little kid, she thought.

"Are you… um, are you going to tell your mother I'm here?" he asked nervously.

Maria snorted. "Do you really think I want to kick her while she's down?" she asked. "'Hey, Mom, sorry you've got some bizarre outbreak of asthma. Did you know the guy who abandoned you has been happily married with kids for years now?'"

"I didn't abandon your mother. We got a divorce."

"Oh, that's right," Maria snapped. "You only abandoned me."

Well, that shut him up, she thought as the silence stretched out. Then she heard a sniffle. Maria turned away from the window to look at her father. His cheeks were wet, and he was silently crying as he drove. She stared at him, hardly even noticing the tears that had formed in her own eyes.

Maria tried to remember anything about her father. She couldn't think of one thing, one actual memory with any content. She remembered his horse sound, which was closer to sounding like a hyena. But she had no idea why she remembered it; she couldn't remember a time when he'd made a horse sound for her. She remembered the smell of the cologne he used to wear, but she couldn't remember what it was called, and she couldn't remember ever seeing him put it on. All her life, she'd been trying to forget him. Now here he was, driving her car. And crying.

Is it even possible to see a man cry and not want to hug him and comfort him? Maria wondered. Right now her father was just a guy. Not the monster who'd left her with no money and no father to love. Not the selfish jerk who was willing to have a whole second family without even telling them about the first family. Just a guy who was crying so hard he could barely drive. "Dad," she said. "Pull over."

He did. He put the car in park, and then he just sat there crying. Maria stayed in her seat, crying too.

"There's no excuse," he finally said through his sobs. "I love you. I always loved you. There's no excuse for what I did. I don't blame you if you hate me forever."

"I don't hate you," Maria said, surprised to find that it was true.

"Really?" He looked at her hopefully.

"Yeah," she said. "But I don't love you either. I don't know what to feel. I don't know anything about you except that you left me."

"I know," he said, fresh tears falling. "But I know a lot about you. I know how sweet your skin smelled when you were a baby. And I know that your favorite book was Martha the Movie Mouse… you would never go to sleep until I'd read it to you at least twice. Sweet pea, I had seven years with you. I've been holding on to those years ever since. In my mind, you're always my baby girl."

Maria wiped her eyes. "I don't remember those years," she whispered.

"Can you take my word for it?" he asked.

"I guess," she replied. She took a shaky breath. "But it doesn't make up for the ten years in between."

Richard sighed. "I understand that."

They sat in silence for a minute, both of them sniffling. "I have to get to Meta-chem," Maria said finally.

"Okay," he answered, putting the car in gear. He pulled back out onto the road.

"Thanks for driving me," Maria said.

“So what's going on outside?" Amy asked. She immediately stuck the oxygen mask back over her nose and mouth.

"Oh, not much," Maria lied. "The whole town is sort of shut down." She tried not to let her mother see how worried she was. Amy looked terrible, thin and pale and tired. Maria had never seen her mother look so tired.

Amy pulled the mask down again. "I've been hearing whispers around here that this all started at the Crashdown," she said.

"Yup. Michaels soup was infected."

Amy just rolled her eyes.

Mom is supposed to be the one worrying about me, Maria thought. I don't like it this way. She had a sudden vision of what it would be like if her mother never got better. Maria felt as if she might hyperventilate. "What's it like inside that thing?" she asked, nodding to the plastic tent that covered Amy's cot. It was strange to be making small talk with your own mother, but glancing around the room,

Maria saw other family members doing the same thing

"It's pretty annoying," Amy admitted. "I can't really see you… you're all distorted by the plastic."

"So are you." Maria grinned. "Your nose looks huge!"

"Shut up!" Amy cried.

They sat in companionable silence for a moment.

"Hey, Mom? Do you need me to do anything?" Maria asked. "For the business, I mean. I know I was being kind of a pain in the butt before…"

"It's okay," Amy replied. "You have your own life and your own job to worry about."

"Yeah, but your alien stuff is the family business," Maria said. "And I'm going to help you with it from now on."

"Oh, Maria, you hate those alien tchotchkes."

"I know," Maria said, "but I love you."

Her mother laughed. "Don't get all morbid on me, honey. I'm not gonna die in here."

"Promise?" Maria asked. "Because I don't know what I'd do without you."

"I think your mom needs to rest now," said the nurse who was taking care of Amy's section of the room. Maria felt a stab of panic… had she tired her mother too much?

"I'm fine," Amy told her, as if she could feel Maria's fear. "I'm just wheezy."

"Okay," Maria said, standing up. "I'll come back and see you as soon as they let me."

Amy nodded tiredly and waved as Maria left. She walked slowly down the row of beds. Because it was visiting day, the nurses weren't paying much attention to security. All the quarantined patients had been put in their own private plastic tent. Maria scanned each bed,

looking for Liz. She was supposed to find out where Liz got the water bottle, that's what Michael had said. But mostly she just wanted to see for herself that her best friend was okay.

Where was Liz? It was hard to see through these thick plastic tents. She reached the end of one row of beds and casually started down the other row.

"Maria!" The voice was muffled, but it was definitely Kyle's. She stopped walking and squinted through the plastic. Kyle lay on the bed inside. Unlike her mother, he had no tubes in him and no oxygen mask.

"Kyle! How are you feeling?"

"Like a freak," he said. "And don't talk so loud, I can't handle loud noises."

"O-kay" she said. "Where's Liz? I'm supposed to… "

"They took her," he interrupted. "And I need to get a message to Max."

Maria blinked in surprise. "From Liz?" She sat down in the chair next to Kyle's bed. Hopefully no one would notice that he wasn't supposed to have visitors today.

"They took Liz because she was the first one sick," Kyle told her. "They're going to do tests, and they're going to find that the virus is mutated alien DNA."

"What?"

"Just listen and tell Max everything I say," Kyle said urgently. "Liz says she and I have alien DNA mixed with our DNA because Max healed us both. And when Liz cleaned up that chemical spill in the lab here… "

"Dr. Sosa's lab."

"Right. She thinks whatever the chemical was, it got into her system and caused a mutation in her alien DNA.

Then she spread it to other people. She and I have one set of symptoms because it activated our alienattributes, our alien genes,"